The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami

See how easy it is to make the most appetizing, delicious and satisfying food ever by including ingredients with umami, the fifth taste.

What is umami? It's another basic taste, like sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. But it's not an ordinary taste. Umami is that rich, savory, extra-satisfying taste of mushrooms, steak, cheese, oysters, and red wine—just a few of the many foods loaded with umami. Umami is a quick and easy way to boost flavor dramatically by waking up taste buds you never knew you had. Science only recently proved its existence, and the world of food and cooking is catching on fast.

In the last year, reports on umami appeared in the New York Times, Saveur, Wine Spectator, Food and Wine, The New Yorker, and numerous other publications. And every day more chefs and home cooks are wowing guests, family and friends with fabulous-tasting umami-rich food. The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami is the first book ever to tell what umami really is, which foods have it (and which don't), and how to use umami every day for some of the best meals you've ever had.

Over 50 delectable umami recipes, for every occasion and for every level of cooking skill, such as:

Anna and David Kasabian are a husband-and-wife team who specialize in all things culinary. The author of nine books, Anna Kasabian has written for Country Living, Cook's Illustrated, Yankee Magazine, Coastal Living, and the Boston Globe. An honors graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, David Kasabian is a professional chef, food writer, and food photographer.